About Me

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Storm in a T-cup

Given the amount of squabbling on its timelines,
should we just rename Twitter as Bicker?

Just a thought. Do you think they should rename Twitter
as Bicker? It certainly seems apt given how it has rapidly become a forum for
people to squabble about everything in short bursts of 140 characters. Lovers
quarrel bitterly; ex-wives and ex-husbands vent venom; new partners give full
rein to their jealous rages; and everyone throws insults around in a
no-holds-barred fashion. Nothing is private. Nothing is sacred. And nothing is
off-limits.

A couple of weeks ago, we watched agog as French
politics descended into soap-opera territory via Twitter. President Francois
Hollande looked on helplessly as his current partner, the journalist Valerie
Trierweiler targeted his former partner (and mother of his four children),
Segolene Royal, in a vicious tweet that hit Royal just where it hurt the most.

Royal, standing for election to a parliamentary seat,
was being opposed by a dissident from her own Socialist party. So her former partner
and now President of the Republic, Francois Hollande, sent out a message of
support to Royal to bolster her chances at the polls (after all, she had done
her best to support his presidential campaign). That was enough to make his
current partner (and now the Premier Dame of France), Trierweiler, see red. She
allegedly called up Hollande to remonstrate and then said chillingly, “Now you
will see what I am capable of.”

And thus went out the now-infamous tweet, motivated by
what insiders called Trierweiler’s ‘blind jealousy’. In it, she wished good
look and ‘courage’ to Royal’s opponent in the poll. All of France was appalled,
the French Prime Minister publicly rebuked Trierweiler and asked that she be
more ‘discreet’ and ‘know her place’. And Royal announced sadly, at an election
rally, that she felt ‘wounded’ by the tweet and that she deserved respect as a
woman, a politician, and a mother.

But the damage was done. When the votes were counted,
Royal had lost the seat, and with it the chances of becoming President of the
National Assembly, the third-highest post in the country’s political structure.
A bitter Royal quoted Victor Hugo to say that “Traitors always pay for their
treachery in the end” and her four children, for good measure, stopped speaking
to their father’s current partner.

So what started out as a storm in a T-cup ended up
taking down the reputations of all the protagonists in the drama. Valerie was
exposed as an insecure, vindictive woman who could not control her insane
jealousy of her partner’s former lover. Hollande was shown up as a man who
could not manage the women in his life (so, how on earth would he manage
France, ran the sub-text). And as for poor Royal, her political career imploded
in the aftermath of Twittergate and looks extremely unlikely to revive any time
soon.

But while nobody in their right minds can condone
Trierweiler’s scorched-earth policy on Twitter, there are some political
spouses who have gained from their tweet-wars. Most famously, there was Anne
Romney who went on Twitter to take on political commentator, Hilary Rosen, who
said in a debate on CNN that Mrs Romney “had never worked a day in her life”.
Anne Romney was quick to retort, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five
boys. Believe me, it was hard work”. Her tweet got her the support of every
stay-at-home mom, and many other women besides.

Of late, though, Twitter wars have tended to be
increasingly undignified, even downright tawdry at times. Take the current
battle royale raging between British multi-millionaire Ben Goldsmith (son of
Jimmy and Annabel Goldsmith and brother to Jemima Khan) and his estranged wife,
Kate, a Rothschild heiress. Ben called his wife’s behaviour ‘appalling’ on Twitter
(because she had called the police on him) while she responded with a series of
tweets saying that there were two sides to every break-up. Meanwhile, Kate’s
alleged lover, the rapper Jay Electronica (yes, really!) put in his two-bit
worth by tweeting #LoveIsOnTheWay. Yeah, real classy, this lot.

In India, too, we have had our share of Twitter wars.
The most famous was the one waged by Lalit Modi against Shashi Tharoor (about
the now-defunct Kochi franchise of the IPL) which resulted in Tharoor losing
his job as minister and being consigned to political wilderness while Modi lost
control of the IPL and was banished from the Indian cricketing scene to
languish in exile (in London, though, so it can’t be all that bad).

More recently, we saw Karan Johar take on Priyanka
Chopra for a story she did or did not (depending on whom you believe) plant
about how some star wives and certain directors who were close to them were
giving her a bad time. A livid Johar tweeted about how some people were ‘lame
and spineless’ and needed ‘to wake up and smell the koffee’ and not ‘mess with
goodness’. Of course, he did not mention Priyanka by name, but the inference
was clear – and Twitter-sphere was abuzz in a matter of seconds.

So, what do you think? Does Bicker work better than
Twitter? Or do you have a better idea? All suggestions welcome at my Twitter handle
(given below). And may the best name win.